


A Night Out

by obbets



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Female Apprentice (The Arcana), Gen, Knight AU, Other, celeste is a knight and rosa is the sister who has to pick up the pieces when everything goes to pot, i don't even know how to tag this it's an AU of an AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 12:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18261542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obbets/pseuds/obbets
Summary: Rosa is cold, and she's so, so sick of it. She wants her sister back, she wants her house to feel like a home again. Maybe she can't have those things, but maybe she can go out and forget her problems for a little while.





	A Night Out

Rosa eyes the meagre stack of coal that was stacked up by the fireplace, wondering if she should add more to the dying fire. She is cold, but she isn't yet shivering under the blankets she had piled on top of her shoulders, and she needs to stretch that coal for as long as she could. The snow had not yet begun to fall over the city, and she knows that she will need it more then than she did now.

But she is cold, and she doesn't want to be, any more. She is so, so sick of being cold.

It would have been more bearable if she maybe had someone to laugh about it with. Her sister was away, gone, still. They wouldn't be back until the summer. Her friends had left her in all but name months ago; stopped asking her to functions when it was clear that she could no longer keep up with the latest fashions, stopped asking after her when she could no longer invite them over, because she had sold the paintings off the walls and the furniture out of the lesser used rooms.

She had held her head up high, as befitted someone of her high birth, through it all. Trips to the pawn shop, letting go the servants that had been with her family since before she was born, walking through the Town hearing the whispers and snickers from behind her, struggling to teach herself to cook, learning what foods go with what, stretching what she had in the cupboards for longer than it should last, seeing people who once would have traded their first born for a place at her dinner table now avoid her eyes like she had the plague. She held her head high, and she walked with just as much confidence as she ever had, although her hair was not as neat as it had once been, because she had to fix it herself, now, and mirrors fetch a good price at auction so she had to make do without.

The fire had died down to just a glow of the coals, now. She wraps the blanket tighter around her shoulders, and shivers.

It is depressing. It's just- _depressing._ She is hungry, and cold, and lonely, and thoroughly _sick_ of feeling this way. She's sick of being alone in this house, full of ghosts and empty memories and the echo of laughter and smiles. Where the fuck is Celeste? Why does she have to go through all of this alone?

It's not fair.

It's not _fair._

She gets up from where she had been sat in front of the fireplace, still clutching the blankets to herself. She will probably regret this later, but she can't stand to be in this house any longer. Maybe she'll have to sell the dining room table earlier than she had hoped.

Who cares? She'd have run out of coal eventually either way.

Rosa strides to her armoire, and picks out a dress that was from last season, but that emphasises her figure, two pairs of stockings and her heaviest fur coat. At least she hadn't yet been forced to give that up. She eventually may have to sell it, but there's some other nonessential pieces of furniture that can go first. She adores this coat; it reminds her of when she was still expensive; it makes her feel valuable.

She does her makeup impeccably. Poor she may be, but she'd throw herself off the nearest cliff before she went out looking any less than her best, even if it does happen to be in last season's fashions.

She makes her way to a part of town that she's never been before - it was always too rough, too shady, too low-class, too _poor_ for her. But she couldn't afford to go anywhere that she might feel any safer.

_Head up, shoulders back._

She walks into a tavern, the golden glow spilling out through the doorway when she enters. It's a riot- laughter, cheers, clinking of bottles, rowdy arguments, and through it all the hubbub of chatter. It's lively, it's - it soothes that shard in her heart that had begun to turn icy. It helps, despite her reservations. She feels a smile creep across her face.

She takes her time getting to the bar, weaving her way around people, so many people, and although she doesn't know any of them, she feels almost like she belongs. Someone bumps roughly into her- "Oh, excuse me, miss. My apologies- _wow."_ His hands are warm where he had grabbed onto her upper arms in an attempt to steady her before she was knocked to the ground, and it's the first time she's been touched in- a while. Too long. A gentleman of high society would never have been allowed to touch her this way. But this man was not of Society. His eyes are wide, taking in her face, her dress, her hair carefully braided to the side, and finally he realises that he's been staring for too long, and lets her go, a sheepish smile coming to his lips. "I must apologise, miss. It has been some time since I've made the acquaintance of a woman as beautiful as you."

The attention is flattering, and it is so soothing to finally have someone look at her like that again. Like she's worth something, like she's wanted. Like she used to be. His face is homely, and his clothes are patched, spun of common cotton. But his smile is bright, his gaze sincere when he asks to buy her a drink, in apology.

She smiles her most winning smile, and wonders if maybe she will not have to choose between buying coal or food, this winter. "My name is Rosa," she says, holding out her hand like she's still a woman of the court.

To his credit, he takes his cue, kissing the back of her hand and bowing low before her. "Ethan," he says. "It's a pleasure to meet you, my lady."

She enjoys his company and his attentions as he talks to her late into the night, as he buys her drinks and then dinner, and it is with a smile that she accepts when he asks, shyly, if she might want to accompany him home that night.

He has logs enough at the fireplace and blankets thick enough on his bed that, for the first time in a long while, she falls asleep feeling warm, with a smile on her face.


End file.
